Koyan's school, my parents' visit to Mali

Dear friends and family,

Here are some new photos of Koyan:
http://picasaweb.google.com/laurenmbiggs/SiratigiJaraMilletWhacking?feat=directlink

I ni faama! This is Bambara for it’s been a long time! When you see someone you haven’t seen in a while in Mali, you always greet them with this and they may periodically repeat it throughout your conversation. It seems somewhere in between a declaration of happiness that you are finally coming to see them and a reproach for not having come to see them sooner. Well, I haven’t written in quite a while so I am the one who should be reproached! My parents came to Mali at the beginning of February and after that we went to Spain together for two weeks. When I returned from Spain, it was (and continues to be) extremely hot here and difficult to motivate myself to do anything (highs normally around 108 with no fan or AC!). Also, readjusting after Spain was difficult, a bit like coming to Mali for the first time except this time without the excitement and newness of everything. I do feel like my honeymoon with Mali is over and I am getting down to the drudgery of daily life. I still love it, but it’s work!

I realize I have not yet written very much about my work here or specifically the school in my village, which I’m sure many of you are interested to learn about. Part of this is because I haven’t done very much formal work yet and because my work has not really been with the school. But anyways, I’ll tell you something about the school in my village, especially since I am starting to work on a project with the school that I’ll need your help with in the near future!

Sitting in on a class in Koyan’s school, it immediately becomes apparent that the school’s greatest need is teacher training. It is an elementary school and should contain grades one through six, but this year only has grades two, four and six – next year it will have grades one, three, and five. The school is only five years old; this is the first year it has a sixth grade. Up until last year it was a community school, meaning that the community hired the teachers, determined the curriculum, and provided part of the teachers’ salaries, although the government also provided part. Last year the school’s management committee, a group I work with and know well, decided to apply to the government to make the school part of the government system. However, it has not yet fully transitioned to being a government school: this year it has one teacher, who is also the school’s director, who was sent by the government and two teachers who were hired by the community. Although in some ways there are substantial differences between the government and community teachers, for the most part they are all very poor teachers. The government teachers have had more training, it seems, and yet they put less effort into teaching. The reasons they are not very motivated teachers seem to be: they are paid automatically by the government whether or not they actually do their job; there is no supervision (when they are not paid it is because the government is having financial issues, which is often the case and results in frequent teacher strikes), they are often sent by the government to work in communities they do not have any connections to and are moved every couple of years, and many teachers actually wanted to pursue other careers but could not find a job in their field of choice. For example, the English teacher at the middle school nearby (in Dombila) wanted to be a lawyer and the biology teacher at the same school wanted to do scientific research. So now Koyan has one government teacher, who has lots of good ideas, especially about girls’ education (she is a helpful if somewhat controlling member of the Student Mothers Group that I started), but is unmotivated and probably is only actually present in the classroom for 50% of class time (she often leaves Koyan early to go to the big town of Kati for the weekend, where she is from and where her husband and child live, and even when she is in Koyan she spends a lot of time resting in her house instead of teaching – partially because she is obese and has health issues). In addition, Koyan has two community teachers, who spend more time in the classroom but have no better teaching methods than reading out French texts to students and asking the students to repeat the text even though they are completely clueless as to its content. The school is (theoretically) conducted entirely in French – this is the old style; government elementary schools are now supposed to have switched to a new system in which students start learning in their local language (in Koyan that would be Bambara) and during elementary school gradually transfer to French, which is the sole language used in middle and high school. However, the students understand extraordinarily little French (Bonjour!, Comment ca va?, Suivez! is about it) so of course the teachers end up reverting to Bambara to give directions and explain enough of the lesson for the students to grasp at the skimpiest threads of meaning.

Unfortunately, as a Peace Corps Mali education volunteer, I was not trained in teacher training and I don’t feel that I personally have the skills to conduct a training workshop. I would love to find an NGO or other partner to improve the skills of the teachers in my village, but I don’t know about any NGOs that do this. In addition, this is not something that the people in my village have identified as one of their needs. One of the difficulties of being a Peace Corps volunteer is coming to terms with the philosophy that even though you as a volunteer think you know better, and perhaps you do, you have to go with the wishes of the community. You are there to work for them and not to develop the community as you see fit (that would reek of colonialism or religious missions, two foreign influences I can’t help but compare myself to as a volunteer here). In addition to its seeming wrong, if you start a project the people of the village are not motivated to work on, the project is probably going to be unsuccessful. The two top education needs that the people of my village identified are a new school building and new desks. As you can see, these are both material things – obtaining them would certainly be good for the community, but it would not help nearly so much (in my opinion) as if the teachers or other community members were to undergo a training or organize an event that would provide them with new skills. My hope, though, is that the mere fact of organizing these projects (obtaining desks and a new school building) will help them develop their organizational and fundraising skills, which will probably be more valuable to the community in the long run than the desks themselves. Many of the desks the school has now are falling apart and they simply don’t have enough for all the students – some students have to sit on the floor, which is pretty awful. The school building is made of mud with a tin roof. Although admittedly cement buildings (which is what the community wants for the new school they want to build) are better since they are cleaner and last longer, there is something wonderful about the fact that the current building was 100% financed and constructed voluntarily by community members. Very interestingly, I learned recently that 300,000 francs (approx. $667) of the funding to build the school was donated by the women of the community, while only 100,000 francs (approx. $222) was donated by the men. Part of this is because there are more women than men in the community (most men have two wives), but I think part of it is also because the women of the village are better at saving money: many are members of groups that give a standard amount of money to a ‘bank’ every week (that is, a small metal case held by one of the women); this is something only done by the women. Many men in the community have motorcycles or bicycles; no women in the community do. I couldn’t figure out if this was cultural (it is not acceptable for a woman to ride a motorcycle or a bike) or because the women didn’t have enough money. I’m starting to see that it’s not that they don’t have enough money, but that they choose to spend their money on other things or save it. And I’m sure part of it is also cultural.

As I was saying . . . The community is very motivated to build a new, cement school even though I’m not sure how much that would really contribute to the quality of learning. It would contribute somewhat and would make the community feel proud, but it seems like it wouldn’t help as much as finding better teachers or training the teachers that do exist. A big disadvantage for Koyan in the area of education is that very few of the adults in the community have been to school at all and those that have been probably didn’t pass the sixth grade. This means that most people can’t read or write and they’re generally unfamiliar with how a school functions and how to tell whether or not their children are actually learning. They’ve realized that an education is important and that many people who get an education go on to get better jobs. In fact, many of the siblings of the adults in Koyan are living in Bamako, working as a bureaucrat, a police officer, or for an NGO. It is good that these people have gone on to have successful careers in Bamako, but unfortunate that they’re no longer in Koyan to help the community develop.

As to the desks: I have decided to take on this project! I kept hearing this demand from people over and over again and I realized that I should really help them get these desks. I thought it would be a nice, small, easy project to start with (as opposed to constructing a whole school building!), but it turns out these desks are actually quite expensive (about $90 per desk –they each fit three to four students) and the overall project is going to have a pretty high cost (about $5,400). Peace Corps has two methods that volunteers can use to fund their projects – the first is called Small Project Assistance and for this method the volunteer fills out a funding demand form including a budget, project objectives, success indicators, etc. and you pretty much automatically receive the funding. The community must contribute at least 33% of the funding for the project, which can come from in-kind contributions – especially things like food, labor, and transport. Peace Corps Washington distributes a certain amount of money for each sector (education, environment, health, business development, etc.) to its various posts (Mali being one) and this money is distributed to volunteers’ projects through the Small Project Assistance program. The second is called Peace Corps Project Partnership; for this method, the volunteer writes up a similar budget and description of the project and the Peace Corps puts this information up online. Then, donors from the U.S. donate money to the project online. With this method, the community only has to contribute a minimum of 25% of the project’s total cost. That the volunteer will get funding for their project from the States is not guaranteed and may take a very long time – it depends on the volunteer’s ability to fundraise.

So I explained these two methods of getting funding to my school management committee, which is managing the desk project, and they said they wanted to go with the second method, even though it’s not guaranteed, because raising 33% of the total cost would be nearly impossible for them on this project, but f25% is much more feasible. What this means is that once I’ve gathered all the information for the project, I’m going to need to start fundraising online so let me know if you have any brilliant fundraising ideas or know any group that’d be willing to help out! I don’t have all the information yet that I need to write the budget and put the project up online, but I’ll keep you updated.

I am using the first method of fundraising to obtain the funds for a soap-making training that will be held in a nearby village in May that I’m really excited about. A woman is going to come from Bamako to teach the women of my village and two other nearby villages how to make soap and start a soap-making business. I think this could be a really great means to empower the women: they can both start a successful income-generating activity and come together as a group of female community leaders. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I think very highly of the women in my village and am more passionate about working with them than with the men! The women are such hard workers and their work doesn’t seem to get hampered by the political squabbles that go on among the men (I have especially been experiencing this among the members of the school management committee).

I have to briefly describe what happened when my parents came to my village, which was quite remarkable. We found a driver to take us out to Koyan (so that my parents did not have to brave being squished into a sweaty van for two hours and then bike-riding 7 kilometers!). On the way from Bamako, my host, Nfabile Jara, kept on calling me and asking me where I was and how soon I’d be there. I thought it must just be because he was excited to see my parents, but now I realize it must have been because he was trying to coordinate this welcome for them. After driving on a paved road for about an hour and a half, we turn off and enter the bush. It is already starting to get dry and the landscape is made up of red dirt, streaked with boulders and small trees. The road is bumpy and convoluted. At one point we drive down into an empty riverbed, where my parents and I get out so that the car is lighter and doesn’t scrape the ground. Eventually we start to enter Koyan and we hear loud hand-clapping and hundreds of children’s voices. We start to see them lining the road and make out that the high-pitched voices are chanting “Mama, papa.” Then we see the looks of joy and excitement in the faces of the children and also the adults who are there. My mom starts to cry. It is truly the warmest welcome you can get anywhere in the world. We pull into the empty space next to the school that the kids use as a soccer field. Our car is mobbed by children and adults wanting to take our hands and greet us and we are barely able to get out. When we emerge from the mob, we find that the school teachers (who are some of my best friends in Koyan) have set up a table with a table cloth and their best chairs for us to sit in. We all sit and the adults make the children quiet down. The teachers give a short speech welcoming us, which I translate for my parents and then we tell them how happy we are to be there and how wonderful this welcome is. The two xylophone players the village has brought for us start playing and the women start dancing. I start dancing with the women and my parents join in too. They are thrilled that we are dancing. All the kids crowd around and watch. Eventually we went back to my house, where my work partner, Zan Jara, gave a speech to my parents (that I translated) in which he said on behalf of the village how happy they are to have me there, what a good volunteer I am, and that they don’t want me to ever leave. My favorite part was when Zan said “We’ve never seen a woman like Sali before.” (Sali being my Malian name.) My parents only spent one night there, which the Malians found much too short. They made my mom promise to come back before I leave Mali and stay for 12 days. They loved both my parents, but they especially loved my mom. They kept on saying how healthy, happy, and energetic she is. They gave my parents Malian names: for my mom, Nyeba Coulibaly, and for my dad, Brahma Jara (that being the name of my host’s father, who passed away). One of the woman in my host family gave birth to a baby girl on that day and they named it after my mom, Nina. Apparently Nina is actually a name in Mali although I’ve never met a Malian named Nina. Now when I talk to someone about this baby they always refer to it as ‘your mom.’ As in, ‘Sali, your mom cries a lot!’

Well, I hope you all are going to come visit me now!

Best,
Lauren